


she stopped loving her today

by boatstoesta



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:15:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24872158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boatstoesta/pseuds/boatstoesta
Summary: A glimpse into the way the people who touch our lives never really leave us. TW: major character death.
Relationships: Chloe Beale & Beca Mitchell, Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell
Comments: 28
Kudos: 48





	she stopped loving her today

**Author's Note:**

> This story displays difficult and explicit emotions regarding death—don’t continue unless you’re okay with experiencing that.

Leaning her head back, Beca’s eyes are met with an ocean of sky. It’s getting darker, the sun nearing its final moments in the air above them. She listens to Chloe’s soft breaths next to her. Her lips curl up at the edges as she turns her head to the side to look at her. 

They’re sitting on the roof of their apartment building, a beer in each of their hands. They’d lugged a six-pack of Corona up the fire escape, and they’re each on their last one now. It’s perfect, though. The sun will set as they take their final sips and they’ll go back inside. But for now, the sky is a flawless gradient from blue to brilliant pink. 

It’s not the sky that makes her chest feel tight, though. It’s the immutable feeling that the world doesn’t deserve the beauty that is Chloe Beale. After seven years of loving her—four of them together—Beca is never quite able to shake that feeling.

“I wish every day could be like today,” Chloe says softly, pulling Beca from her thoughts. 

Her lips tilt up in a smirk. “Yeah, until you get tired of me,” Beca jokes. 

Chloe lets out a laugh that’s pure light. “Please, I’m going to love you until the day I die.”

Beca's chest inflates. Those words are still so unfamiliar to her, regardless of how often Chloe tells her she loves her. No one has ever cared for her so fully, so unquestioningly. She’s not even sure her parents have, despite trying to the best way they could.

Chloe reaches out and gently holds Beca’s face in her hands. Her lips slide against Beca’s, long and slow like she has no reason to rush. Beca can taste the beer on her lips, sweet and tangy and crisp and right. When they finally pull away, warm smiles on their mouths, the sun’s journey is nearly complete.

There’s an itch to say more, but Chloe has stolen the words right out from under her. Raising her beer to her lips, she thinks about how a Corona Light will never taste like anything but Chloe’s kiss again.

***

Mornings are the worst part of Beca’s day—that’s not even a question. She’s lying in bed as she watches Chloe pull her scrubs on, getting ready for work. In the early morning light, she looks so stunning. Her hair is pulled up into a messy red bun, but it falls in all the right places. Beca can't help but love the way Chloe is _her_ mess.

It makes her think about the way her fingers were tangled in Chloe’s hair last night. She’s replaying in her head exactly how it felt to have Chloe between her legs, and an altogether different kind of hunger takes over.

Most of all, it makes her think about the ring she accidentally found in Chloe’s dresser as she put away laundry two weeks ago. Beca doesn’t know how long it’s been there, but looking at Chloe now, she wishes Chloe would just give it to her already. She wants every day for the rest of her life to be just like this—all messy hair and long yawns and hating to leave each other.

“Come here,” Beca says, a mischievous smile on her lips. Chloe smirks down at her as she pulls a sock on. It isn’t hard for her to tell what’s on Beca’s mind—it never is for Chloe.

Her heart swells as Chloe kneels on the bed and presses a lazy kiss to Beca’s lips. It’s meant to be chaste, but Beca parts her lips in anticipation and captures Chloe’s lips with a desperation that says everything. Beca immediately doubles down, kissing her harder, bringing her hand up to Chloe’s neck.

“Mm, babe,” Chloe chuckles into the kiss. “I have to leave for work, I can’t do this right now.”

“Just five minutes,” Beca murmurs against her lips. “Ten tops.”

Chloe tries pulling back. “I’m going to be late.” She lets Beca kiss her again before saying, “I’ve already been late twice this month for this.”

Beca looks into Chloe’s eyes, seeing a hunger there that matches her own so intensely. Her lips find Chloe’s neck, and when a soft groan leaves Chloe’s mouth she knows that Chloe is entirely correct—she’s going to be late.

***

Beca is sitting at her kitchen table, her dad sitting across from her. They’re talking about everything and nothing all at once in one of their more common visits.

She’s making an effort to include him in her life more, and it’s really so easy compared to her younger years. It helps that he stopped trying to change her a long time ago. Beca wonders if it happened when she found Chloe and he saw that she’d found happiness, too.

Her doorbell rings, cutting her dad off mid-sentence. “One second,” Beca says, walking to the door.

She’s met with the stoic face of an unfamiliar woman in a police uniform. For a moment Beca is wondering what this is about, if her car is parked in a fire lane or something equally inconsequential. But the officer looks at her with such pity that it makes her stomach drop before a word has even been uttered.

“Are you Beca Mitchell?”

She nods wordlessly, her lips parted in an unspoken question. For a moment everything is so silent. So silent until the fistful of words ruin her.

***

She walks to the living room and sits on the couch. Her breaths come heavy. One, two. In, out. The news soaks through her body—through her skin, into her muscles, into her very bones—and when it reaches her chest, that’s when she breaks. Heavy breaths turn to hyperventilation, and then her face is in her hands. That’s when the sobs begin.

She doesn’t know why she thought moving one room away would afford her any privacy—within moments her dad rushes from the kitchen over to her. It’s obvious in the way Beca cries that this is something different, something altogether too serious. He kneels at her feet, his hands on her knees. 

“What happened? Beca, tell me what happened. Please.”

She cries for another two minutes wordlessly. No, she’s not crying—her body isn’t even hers anymore. It belongs to this guttural reaction of convulsions and vocalizations she doesn’t have the words to name, should never _need_ the reason to name. 

Through her tear-swollen eyes and raw throat, Beca says it. It doesn’t exactly come out like words, though—it’s broken and messy and so terribly fucking pained. 

“Chloe—Chloe,” she chokes out. Her eyes squeeze shut again. “Chloe’s dead. She’s gone.”

To his ever-enduring credit, for once in his life, Beca’s dad does exactly the right thing. He doesn’t ask questions. The words ‘how’ and ‘why’ don’t even enter his mind. He just moves onto the couch and pulls Beca into him until she’s laying with her head in his lap, holding her while her world collapses. 

The officer's words permeate her mind over and over again. _There’s been an accident. Chloe Beale, she listed you as her emergency contact. Chloe is—Chloe was killed instantly when a truck ran a red light this morning. Miss Mitchell, I’m so sorry._

There are times when you receive bad news, and it doesn’t feel real. It might not feel real for days or weeks. Maybe not even until the body is in the ground will it feel real. This is not one of those times. The moment Beca heard, it hit her—that feeling that she’s existing in a world where Chloe does not is so instant. She feels the knowledge of it in her very core. 

“She was going to be late because of me,” Beca cries. “I made her late. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but I made her late.”

“Oh, Beca,” is all her dad can say. “Oh, honey.”

By the time her body can’t cry any longer, an hour has passed. She isn’t crying anymore, but it feels like she is. Her lungs burn, her eyes are swollen. Hot tears still leak from the corners of her eyes. The only difference is the volume. She’s sitting on the couch, hugging a pillow, her chin resting on it as she stares at the wall. She goes on like this for hours, every twenty minutes sliding right back into endless, desperate, lost sobbing. Yelling into the pillow. Body shaking like a seizure. 

Because she’d made her late. Beca had made her late.

Because Chloe promised to love her till the day she died.

Because Chloe stopped loving her today.

***

Beca floats through the days, alternating between incalculable grief and astronomical numbness.

Everyone calls to reach out, to offer some semblance of support. Frankly, Beca rarely says anything in return. So many people ask her, “What can we do for you right now?”

Not a thing. Not a single thing.

***

Beca stares at the casket. It’s closed—it has to be closed. Chloe’s parents stand next to it, looking as broken as Beca has ever seen two people look.

Chloe’s dad puts his hand on his wife’s shoulder, staring at the carpet. His eyes glitter blue just like Chloe’s did, sunken into dark sockets as though he’s a living ghost. 

She walks up to the casket and kneels before it. One hand touches the dark mahogany, and in that breadth of timeless hurt, she thinks everything she wishes she could say to Chloe. It boils down to the simplest of truths that Beca holds close to her chest.

_I’m so sorry. I’m always going to be so sorry._

***

The first time Beca is scratching the note down on paper, she realizes that this might be a strange way of coping. But so is staring at walls, so is zoning out for hours. So is not being able to focus on anything that isn’t Chloe being gone.

So she does it. She writes a note to Chloe.

The first one is simple. _I wish I could talk to you one last time. I miss you so much. I love you._

She wipes the tears from her eyes, folds it up, tosses it in a drawer, and leaves it there untouched. As time goes on, the notes get longer. 

The first time she laughs after Chloe causes a wound almost as deep as the loss itself. 

_I thought about the way your mom calls you ‘squishy’ because you were a chubby baby, and how much you hated the nickname. I was the only person you told about it, remember? And I called you squishy, and you tackled me, and you held me down until we were both laughing in tears._

_It kills me to think about it. I want to know if you would have had chubby babies, too. We were supposed to find out together. It was always supposed to happen that way._

_I would give all that I am just to hold you one last time, to listen to you singing in the shower. To hear you say you love me. I’ve thought it a thousand times since you left, I've cried it, I've yelled it, but I’m never going to hear it back._

_I love you. I love you._

Soon her drawer is full of them. When she’s at work and Chloe is all she can think of, she pulls out a sheet of paper and writes down what she would say to Chloe if she were still here. Note after note, she says it all.

***

Six months pass. Beca is nowhere near being better—in fact, she slides deeper into depression every day.

It’s a dark night with a painstakingly clear sky as Beca drives with no destination in mind. She’s looking at the road, but at the same time, she’s so zoned out she shouldn’t even be driving. 

Beca isn’t thinking about anything. She’s just... miserable. She’s in the same plane of existence as everyone else in the world, but that’s all she’s really doing—existing.

The song changes. It’s sad and it’s slow, and if she had any instinct of self-preservation left she’d change it. But she doesn’t—it’s a song Chloe used to sing. Tears well up in her eyes as it plays. Three words—three words is all it takes to completely unravel her. The simple, cruel phrase ‘here without you’ gets belted out over the speakers, and then Beca is hunched over the wheel with sobs racking her body. 

It’s just as bad as the day of the phone call. It’s guttural and it’s animalistic, the noises that leave her mouth. Snot is dripping down her nose and she can barely see the road through her tears. She’s daring a car to blow a stop sign and do to her what was done to Chloe. Every set of headlights brings the same thought— _I dare you to cross the dotted line._

Two tires slip off the road, throwing dirt and dust into the chilly night air. Beca slams on the brakes and the car comes to a stop in the ditch. She’s sobbing over and over again, just saying Chloe’s name like it’s her last goddamn prayer.

***

Beca doesn’t even like to drive, but she finds herself going out late and turning the music up as loud as it can go, singing until her throat is raw almost every night.

She always relives that morning. In those long drives, she tries to picture a version of it that leaves their life together intact—one where she kisses Chloe so desperately, always wanting her, always wanting more. But when Chloe tells her she has to go to work, Beca instead sighs wistfully. She lets her head fall back onto the pillow and she lets her go. 

She tells that version of herself to just say the right words. Just say the words that will let Chloe have more days. _Okay, baby. Go to work, and I’ll see you tonight. I’ll miss you the whole time._

Give her one last lingering kiss, and for the love of God, let her go.

She drives so much faster than she should—there’s no reason she should be driving a hundred and five miles an hour down a back road. But when trees blur and everything fades, it’s harder to focus on the hurt. 

Her knuckles are white with the force of her grip on the steering wheel, and by the end of nights like this, she can barely feel her fingers.

This is when she allows herself to hate the world.

To live with the knowledge that maybe, just maybe, if she’d said something else, Chloe might still be alive... God, how do you live with that? How can you possibly? 

You do it by not thinking about it. Or forgiving yourself until you believe it, even if you don’t fully believe it. Or maybe you believe it for a while, maybe even for a long time, until your world crashes and you have to force yourself to believe it all over again. 

You do it even if you’re on your knees in the proverbial mud and it feels like your chest is caving in. You tell yourself it isn’t your fault, that you couldn’t have known. 

But some part of you will always ask: is that true?

***

A year passes. Beca sits on a park bench, the sun soaking her. It feels so good. It’s the type of day where the sun makes your skin feel warm everywhere that it kisses it, but it doesn’t make you hot or uncomfortable. It just makes you feel alive. And it’s exactly the type of day Chloe used to love.

Beca has cried and wallowed and clawed her way back up through the months. There’s no cure for Chloe being gone, Beca knows that much. But she thinks that maybe letting time pass is the closest thing she’ll ever get.

She closes her eyes and leans her head back and realizes that she’s okay. She’ll never be truly okay, not all the way, not like she was before. But right now she feels like she’s the closest she’s been in a long time. She feels like how she imagines Chloe would want her to after all this time.

***

On her way home from that sunny park bench, she stops and picks up a six-pack of Corona Light. Setting them on her kitchen counter, she finds a brown paper bag and opens the drawer with all her notes to Chloe. For a moment all she can do is stare at them. Finally, she scoops a handful of folded pieces of paper. Handful after handful, she empties the drawer into the bag.

She drives out to her dad’s house, out of the city and into the country. 

She builds a small fire. When it’s hot enough to sustain itself, giving off radiant heat as embers float through the air toward the heavens, she pulls out a single beer. 

The moment Beca raises it to her mouth she’s met by the crisp and bittersweet taste of the memory it holds. The bubbles bite her tongue and prickle her stomach. The taste of it is all Chloe—it’s that kiss under a dimming sun, it’s the promise of her love, it’s the pure essence of her lips.

Beca picks up the pile of notes, the year’s worth of heartache and loneliness and complete and utter loss, and she throws them on the fire. A bullet to the chest would be less painful than watching them disappear, but Beca knows it’s the right thing to do. Chloe wouldn’t want her living with her regrets in a drawer. 

She pulls out the only blank piece of paper in the bag, the one she has saved for exactly this moment. Tears are streaming down her face as she shakily uncaps her pen.

Bringing the bottle to her lips, she takes one last sip of Corona. Her eyes close as she lets the taste sit on her tongue and it forces more tears onto her face. 

Reliving that night she tasted it last, Beca vows to never drink it again. It will never taste as good and as right as it did on Chloe’s lips that day. 

So much time in this world is spent living with the things that are done and the things that will be forever left undone. Things that went horribly wrong and will never be put back right again. Things that we’ll never know and will never have the right to know. 

She knows she’ll always wonder about those moments leading up to the car wreck on that last imperfect morning. If Chloe still would have slipped through her fingers had it been perfect. More than anything, she feels the unfairness of it, the unforgivable injustice of loving someone who will never come back. 

Beca flips the bottle upside down and drains it into the dirt as she watches the papers burn. The last one is still clutched tightly in her fingers. Hands shaking, she places it in the ash-filled flames. Her eyes watch intently, staining her cheeks with sticky tears as they consume her last words to Chloe.

_I’ll love you until the day I die._


End file.
